Death
by Musixeer
Summary: Death came for them all that night. But, there was one thing Death had never anticipated and that was Arya Stark.


_I had to write this. I'm pretty sure I didn't get the dialogue quite spot on here, but I knew the moment Arya spoke to Melisandre how the episode would end and I just had to write this down before I went to bed because _YES!

_So, here it is, my in-depth take on Arya's conversation with Melisandre._

_Spoilers, obviously, for S8.03._

* * *

She saw it the moment the light left his eyes. Beric Dondarrion, a man who had been impaled through the chest, stabbed in the belly, shot in the back, nearly cleaved in two with an axe, simultaneously hung and stabbed through the eye, and cleaved near in two by the Hound, had just breathed his final breath on that cold winter night. A man who had returned from the dead six times had just been killed by the dead.

It was like the ironic end to a tragic poem.

Arya stared down at him for a moment, her heartbeat pounding away in her ears loud enough to drown out the pounding of dead fists on the door.

They would probably join him soon.

"The Lord of Light brought him back for a purpose."

With a numb sort of resignation taking hold of her, Arya turned towards this voice. She didn't know if she was surprised to find the woman to be one of the few still living inside those walls, but she supposed it didn't much matter. It almost seemed as if she was waiting for something and Arya wondered idly what that something was. But, she couldn't find the will in that moment to care.

None of it would matter soon.

"That purpose is now finished."

Arya blinked and she wondered if she was supposed to be afraid. Afraid to die, to see the end of her story which had already been so wrought with death that this was probably the only way it could have ended.

It felt as though Death had followed her all her life and now it was finally here to claim her.

"I know you," Arya said as she stood and approached the woman.

The Red Woman.

She used to recite that name to herself every night, a promise to herself that she would one day be the woman's end. But, somehow, in that moment surrounded by the dead, she couldn't bring herself to hate her. Not anymore.

She didn't want hatred to be the final thing she felt before she died.

"And I know you."

The Red Woman met her approach somewhere in the middle of the room and something in the way she was looking at her made Arya wonder if this was what she'd been waiting for.

"You said we would meet again."

"And here we are, at the end of the world."

Were they supposed to die here together? Had Arya waged her way through a river of blood to die standing side-by-side with a woman she had once envisioned killing? This wasn't how she'd imagined her life would end when she'd crossed the Narrow Sea, but life, she supposed, always had a cruel sense of humor.

"You also said there were eyes I would shut forever. You were right about that too."

If it was one thing Arya could find solace in, it was that she had found some justice for her family, some justice for the lives that had been taken, before she died.

Ser Meryn Trant had died for Syrio Forel.

Walder Frey and his family had died for Robb and her mother.

And Petyr Baelish had died for her father.

Arya could find some peace in that. She could face her end knowing theirs had come first.

But, then, surrounded by an army of the dead and trapped in a room littered with corpses Arya was sure they would soon be joining, Melisandre smiled.

Because she had been waiting for this moment.

"Green eyes," she recited words spoken long ago and Arya felt their weight settle on her. "Brown eyes."

Because she could hear them. She could hear those words which would follow, words echoing up from the recesses of her memory, and they resounded with so much more meaning than they had back then.

"Blue eyes."

Blue like that which had surrounded the Walls of Winterfell that night. Blue like that which had chased her through the halls. Hunted her through her home. Sought to end her life until Beric Dondarrion, a man who had died and returned to life six times, gave his life one final time for hers.

Arya didn't believe in the Gods. Seven Gods, Old Gods, the God of Light, the Drowned God, Horse Gods. The only God she believed in was Death and Death had come for them all that night.

But, perhaps there was some other force at work.

When Beric had traded Gendry to the Red Woman on the order of his God, it had sent Arya away. She had met the Hound, the very man who had carried her away as Beric was stabbed to his death. She had gone to Bravos where she had joined with the Faceless Men and learned how to remain unseen, how to move undetected even through halls filled with the roaming dead. And she had returned to Winterfell shortly after her brother.

A seer who had given her a dagger of Valyrian Steel which had been given to him by the very man who had sought to end him with it.

That dagger felt somehow heavy at her hip now, heavy with the weight of a purpose which had perhaps been unfolding for a very long time.

The Night King was going after Bran and it was as if her brother had known all along that she would need the dagger he had given her.

She didn't believe in the Gods, but she didn't need to. She knew what she had to do.

If Night King died, so did his army.

The dead banged on the door more loudly then as if they had heard this realization themselves and Arya turned to face them. She could feel the Red Woman and the Hound—Sandor, she corrected herself, because she could probably stand to use his real name after all of this— at her back. The dead were coming. They had flooded her home and now they had come to kill them all.

But, Arya knew this Keep. She'd explored it as a child. She'd walked it in her dreams. She knew it better than any of them.

She had to get to the Godswood.

"What do we say to the God of Death?"

_There is only one God and His name is Death. There is only one thing we say to Death._

"Not today."

These words were her core, her strength, and with them spoken, Arya turned and walked away. Away from the dead. Away from her death. The dead, although they had tried, were not there for her. Death would not claim her that night, she knew as her hand fell upon a hilt of smooth dragonglass.

She would claim Death.


End file.
